Most engines require some type of assistance or set format. However both Shopping.com and NexTag.com offer the ability in their administrative panels to remap the data which is coming though. This can be a great benefit if data available changes, or if you just want to make sure that data is coming in properly.

Or maybe you are just looking to see what it would take to get on board with a shopping comparison engine. That is why I created this quick reference guide. Remember, this is just a guide, not an absolute schedule. This is based on an average depending on your experience – could take more or less time than this. It also depends on where you are heading to. If you are trying to get on Amazon Seller Central, this may take a little bit longer. So here is what you are in for on each channel:

1 hour to set up an account per engine: This includes finding the link to enter in billing information, typing it all in, entering any pre-requisites. Once you have done this 10 times, I am sure the average will go down to 10 minutes.

5 hours to format a feed: Even if you are using a third party solution, you can expect to invest some time here to really understand what is being asked for. You or anyone sending a datafeed for the company should know what is needed, and what the consequences are for not having a shipping rate, for example.

3 hours to transmit the feed and confirm proper transmission: This is the most important and sometimes over looked aspect. You want to make sure the feed is properly being updated. This 3 hour estimate is spread over a couple of days time, to ensure updates are being processed on the engines’ side.

3 hours to trouble shoot initial feed: This is an average, but I truly believe that every new feed will need to be tweaked based on the engine’s requirements. This goes back to the previous 2 steps. Chances are you mis-understood or just plain overlooked something. You definitely want to spend some time in reviewing all categories you have assigned, product names, and pricing. And if you have not spent time assigning categories, then you need to go back to the previous steps.

5 hours for observation and further optimization: This is where a good merchant is separated from the average ones. Review the analytics, product by product. What is the competition doing? Which products are selling? Which products are leading to upsells? What are the differences between this engine and other engines? Are there additional things that can be done like signing up for customer feed back tools? Ask questions, and many of them.
17 hours total, for one shopping comparison engine feed: Remember this is just an estimate, but truly anyone who is looking to simply shoot a product feed out there, I would suggest either waiting until Q1 2008, or get yourself a responsible professional to put this together. You don’t want to spend $500 to sell 3 pairs of iPod headphones.

The change has effected an undetermined amount of merchants by altering the XML pricing layout by switching the location of the retail and selling price of an item. If a merchants displays both retail price and sale price on a Yahoo! Store, they may want to check to see how the information is being mapped into the pricing fields of the Yahoo XML feed.

Below is a quick illustration of how the pricing is currently being put together in some versions. Notice formatting of each field for both sale and retail or MSRP price:

<Pricing>
<BasePrice>419.00</BasePrice>
<LocalizedBasePrice>419.00</LocalizedBasePrice>
<SalePrice>339.00</SalePrice>
<LocalizedSalePrice>339.00</LocalizedSalePrice>
</Pricing>

I would suggest anyone running a Yahoo! Store should check their XML ObjInfo files to see if this change has altered their pricing. Many merchants are currently sending or displaying retail pricing on CSEs. This could be a time for a clever merchant to rake in a bunch of sales while everyone else catches up.

1. Make sure the CSE account is set up to accept via FTP. An engine will almost never automatically create an FTP location to send a product file to. At sign up, or after an account has been created, login to the control panel or account administration part of the CSE (typically this is done through a link on the home page for advertisers or merchants). Once logged in, there will be a way to update or change the method to submit products. This must be set to send or receive product information via FTP access.

2. Make sure the correct FTP username and password is being used. The FTP username and password is NOT the same as the account username and password issued upon sign up. The FTP username and password is typically very different and sometimes nothing more than a random series of numbers and letters. Some CSE’s require a request to be sent in, however, many will issue this information when an update method is chosen.

3. Make sure the path, account information and file name is correct. Path names are never quite the same, but verify all characters and spelling. There is a big difference between “ftp://ftp.uploads.google.com” and “ftp.uploads.google.com”. Check the full path extension and when copying and pasting password information, make sure not to include spaces. Once all this is verified, the last portion is the file name. Sometimes an engine picks up the file regardless, but otherwise an engine may be looking for a different file name. This can cause hours or possibly months of headaches if a merchant realizes down the road their products are not being updated because an old product file is still being used.

· CSV – Comma separated

· TXT – Tab separated

· XML – Extensible markup language

· XLS – Excel

Each of these file types must then feed the comparison engines with the information they are looking for. For example, the below lay out is an example of how a product file may need to be converted over. Each product file contains pieces of information needed to accurately portray the product. These pieces of information are then divided up into a logical format, typically in this type of way:

Product Name: iPod Nano

Manufacturer: Apple

Description: 4GB, carry your music anywhere. Stores up to 2000 songs.

Price: $199.00

Product page: www.sample-store-abc.com/ipod-nano

Image location: www.sample-store-abc.com/ipod-nano.jpg

Shipping cost: $5.99

Now, this information needs to be translated to something the engine understands. In a product file, the product would be listed like this. On the top of row of the file would be the header row. This row indicates what type of information is coming in each column after the first row. Then each product is listed in the rows underneath that, which would read like this:

(Apologies for the sloppy chart, still working on the site coding)

Now, this information needs to be translated so Shopzilla will understand. Each column from the header row must be replaced as follows:

Merchant’s Data Shopzilla Requirements

Obviously from this example, there is a lot of information missing from the equation. This is where the gaps need to be filled in. If the information is not available in the product feed, then the information should be created through some process. Ideally any information relevant to the product should be included.

So, if you are trying continually update a product file, this is probably not a good idea. There was a time when Froogle’s relevancy were partially calculated depending on the frequency, or at least the last time of submission. Happily for anyone sending files over dial up or similar prehistoric transmission methods, this is no longer the case. The best thing to do is simply update the product file when you have a significant change in inventory.

In a future post, I will be putting together a time-line and frequency chart for how ofter shopping comparison engines pick up and process new feeds.

Take care!

MSN will not be charging for this service and it should quickly become one of the top free comparison engines in the market.

Per their site, submissions may be done through email, upload through a web browser, through RSS feed, or through FTP. Acceptable formats include both XML and TXT files. As listed the following are the fields displayed, with a star* next to required fields:

OfferName*
ActionURL*
RegularPrice*
ReferenceImageUrl*
OfferDescription* (1024 character limit)
Brand
CurrentPrice
UPC
ISBN
AMGID

If you want to see fist hand what looks to be an interesting development, and a great place to expand your marketing channels, visit MSN here: http://productupload.live.com/

I will keep you updated as more information comes through.